Network

P.R. MAN

(calling to Steinman)

ABC again, wants the tape –

STEINMAN

Tell him to go fuck himself

(to phone)

And that goes for you too, Marty –

HACKETT

(to Howard Beale, sitting on the couch)

You're off the air as of now.

CHANEY

(extending his phone to Hackett)

He wants to talk to you –

HACKETT

(to Max, leaning against a wall)

Who's replacing Beale tomorrow?

MAX

We're flying up Snowden from Washington.

STEINMAN

(leaning across Hackett to turn up the volume knob on Max's desk)

All right, everybody hold it. Let's see how the other networks handled this –

He is referring to the four television monitors – three on the wall and a large office console monitor of UBS-TV, now blurting out their respective commercials –

THACKERAY

(VP Stations Relations, lounging in the doorway)

The ten o'clock news opened with it –

HACKETT

(on phone)

Walter's drafted a statement, I haven't seen it yet – I just got here, John, I was at a dinner party –

Suddenly, the faces of DAVE MARASH and ROLAND SMITH and CHUCK SCARBOROUGH and ROGER GRIMSBY and BILL BEUTEL and the UBS local news anchorman, TIM HALLOWAY, are on the screen. Affable Dave Marash on the CBS monitor is saying:

MARASH

(affably)

An unusual thing happened at one of our sister networks, UBS, this evening –

ROGER GRIMSBY

(almost simultaneously)

Howard Beale, one of television's most esteemed newscasters –

CHUCK SCARBOROUGH

Howard Beale interrupted his network news program tonight to announce –

HACKETT

(mutters)

Shit –

TIM HALLOWAY

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made a forceful address before the United Nations General Assembly –

HACKETT

(to Max)

How are we handling it?

MAX

Halloway's going to make a brief statement at the end of the show to the effect Howard's been under great personal stress, et cetera.

Hackett reaches to click off the bank of monitor screens. They abruptly go black.

HACKETT

(on phone)

I'll call you back, John.

(returns the phone to its cradle, regards the gathered Executives)

All right. We've got a stockholders' meeting tomorrow at which we're going to announce the restructuring of management plan, and I don't want this grotesque incident to interfere with that. I'll suggest Mr. Ruddy open with a short statement washing this whole thing off, and, you, Max, better have some answers in case some of those nuts that always come to stockholders' meetings –

MAX

(back to leaning against the wall)

Mr. Beale has been under great personal and professional pressures –

HACKETT

(exploding)

I've got some goddam surprises for you too, Schumacher! I've had it up to here with your cruddy division and its annual thirty-three million dollar deficit! –

MAX

Keep your hands off my news division Frank. We're responsible to corporate level, not to you.

HACKETT

We'll goddam well see about that!

CHANEY

All right, take it easy. Right now, how' re we going to get Beale out of here? I understand there's at least a hundred reporters and camera crews in the lobby.

MAX

We've got a limo waiting at the freight entrance. Howard'll stay at my place tonight. There's bound to be press around his place.

EXT. SIXTH AVENUE – TELEVISION ROW – WEDNESDAY – 10:00 A.M. – DAY

HIGH WIDE ANGLE SHOT and/or SHOTS showing Television Row – that quarter mile of Sixth Avenue where the four television networks have their chrome, marble and glass buildings rearing futuristically into the sky – 30 Rock (NBC-TV), Black Rock (CBS-TV), and Hard Rock (ABC-TV), and, of course, the network of our story, UBS-TV. It is a nice, sunny day –

INT. UBS BUILDING – 5TH FLOOR – MAX'S OFFICE – WEDNESDAY – 10:00 A.M. – DAY

SUNLIGHT streaming in. Max at his desk, shirtsleeved, on the phone –

MAX

(on phone)

– I want Snowden here by noon. Have Lester cover the Rockefeller hearings and give the White House to Doris –

MAX'S SECRETARY sticks her head in –

SECRETARY

You're late for your screening.

MAX hangs up, stands, gathers his jacket off a chair and heads for the door –

MAX

If John Wheeler calls, switch him to Screening Room Seven –

He exits –
 

INT. NINTH FLOOR – SCREENING ROOM 7

A middling-sized screening room with about 20 seats. There are two people already there – a whippet-like, casually-dressed man of 36, BILL HERRON, and the VP Programs, DIANA CHRISTENSON, dressed in slacks and blouse, 34, tall, willowy, and with the best ass ever seen on a Vice President in charge of Programming –

MAX

(entering)

I'm sorry – this Beale business –

Max and Diana exchange nods and professionally polite greetings –

HERRON

(buzzing the projectionist)

Diana asked if she could sit in on this –

MAX

Fine –

(sits, calls to Diana)

How's it going?

Diana shrugs, smiles. The lights in the room go down. A shaft of light shoots out from the projection room. The PHONE at Max's elbow BUZZES. He picks it up –

MAX

(murmurs into phone)

Max Schumacher – I'm glad I got you, John. Listen, I got into a hassle with Frank Hackett last night over the Howard Beale thing, and he made a crack about the stockholders' meeting this afternoon. He said something about having some surprises for me. Is there something going on, John, I don't know about?... John, I'm counting on you and Mr. Ruddy to back me up against that son of a bitch Okay, see you this afternoon –

He hangs up, leans back, watches the documentary film which has just begun. ON SCREEN, a handsome black woman in her early 30's –

MAX

Who's that, Laureen Hobbs?

HERRON

Yeah.

– is sitting in a typical panel discussion grouping, flanked by three MEN and a WOMAN, two white, two black, all very urban guerilla, in fatigues, sun glasses and combat boots. MISS HOBBS looks calmly into camera and says:

LAUREEN HOBBS (ON SCREEN)

The Communist Party believes that the most pressing political necessity today is the consolidation of the revolutionary, radical and democratic movements into a United Front –

The PHONE BUZZES softly. Max picks it up –

MAX

(murmurs into phone)

Yeah?... Oh, goddamit, when, Louise? Well, did he say anything?... All right, thanks.

(hangs up, promptly picks up again)

Four-eight-oh-seven –

LAUREEN HOBBS (ON SCREEN)

(in b.g.)

Repression is the response of an increasingly desperate, imperialist ruling clique. Indeed, the entire apparatus of the bourgeois-democratic state especially its judicial systems and its prisons is disintegrating –

MAX

(on phone)

Harry, Howard left my house about ten minutes ago presumably headed here. Let me know as soon as he gets here.

LAUREEN HOBBS (ON SCREEN)

(in b.g.)

The fascist thrust must be resisted in its incipient stages by the broadest possible coalition –

INT. SCREENING ROOM 7 – TWENTY MINUTES LATER

Room still dark. ON SCREEN, NUMBERED WHITE LEADER is rolling down –

HERRON

What we're going to see now is something really sensational. The Flagstaff Independent Bank in Arizona was ripped off last week by a terrorist group called the Ecumenical Liberation Army, and they themselves actually took movies of the rip-off while they were ripping it off. It's in black and white, but wait'll you see it –

The SCREEN suddenly erupts into film of the interior of a bank being entered in the wake of THREE MEN, two of them black, and TWO WOMEN, one black and one white. They disperse to various parts of the bank as if they were here on legitimate business –

DIANA

The Ecumenical Liberation Army – is that the one that kidnapped Patty Hearst?

HERRON

No, that's the Symbionese Liberation Army. This is the Ecumenical Liberation Army. They're the ones who kidnapped Mary Ann Gifford three weeks ago. There's a hell of a lot of liberation armies in the revolutionary underground and a lot of kidnapped heiresses. That's Mary Ann Gifford –

This last in reference to the young white woman on screen who is lugging a shopping bag as she joins a line at a teller's window –

DIANA

You mean, they actually shot this film while they were ripping off the bank?

HERRON

Yeah, wait'll you see it. I don't know whether to edit or leave it raw like this. That's the Great Ahmed Khan; he's the leader –

ON SCREEN, the film has gone out of focus a couple of times and bounced meaninglessly around the bank and finally settled on a large, powerful black man at one of the desks, presumably writing out a series of deposit slips –

DIANA

This is terrific stuff. Where did you get it?

HERRON

I got everything through Laureen Hobbs. She's my contact for all this stuff.

DIANA

I thought she was straight Communist Party.

HERRON

Right. But she's trying to unify all the factions in the underground, so she knows everybody.

ON SCREEN, the CAMERA has whooshed amateurishly about, unfocuses and focuses again to pick up MARY ANN GIFFORD bending over her shopping bag and pulling out a Czech service submachine gun 9 Parabellum which she points to the ceiling and apparently fires; the FILM is silent, but the reactions of everyone around suggest clearly something was fired. The FILM gets fragmented and panicky about here, as does the activity in the bank. The PHONE at Max's elbow BUZZES. Max picks it up.

MAX

(on the phone, while in b.g. a bank hold-up goes on screen)

Yeah?... All right, put him on –

INT. THE NIGHTLY NEWS ROOM – ROOM 517

Harry Hunter, on phone, is using an empty desk in the main room. Normal news room activity in b.g. –

HARRY HUNTER

(on phone, leans back to call into Howard's office)

Howard – I've got Max on four, would you pick up? –

INT. HOWARD'S OFFICE

HOWARD
(picking up phone)

Listen, Max, I'd like another shot –

INT. SCREENING ROOM 7

The silent footage of the frenetic bank robbery is still going on in b.g.

MAX

(on phone)

Oh, come on, Howard –

INT. HOWARD'S OFFICE

HOWARD

(on phone)

I don't mean the whole show. I'd just like to come on, make some kind of brief farewell statement and then turn the show over to Jack Snowden. I have eleven years at this network, Max. I have some standing in this industry. I don't want to go out like a clown. It'll be simple and dignified. You and Harry can check the copy